


Skating in Traffic is Bad

by Green_penguins



Series: Spoilers: Willie Dies [3]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Ghost Powers, I mean Willie's a ghost, Willie Backstory (Julie and The Phantoms), Willie-centric (Julie and The Phantoms), so thats kind of a given at some point, the author is very interested in how being a ghost works, trying to give Willie closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:29:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29807742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Green_penguins/pseuds/Green_penguins
Summary: Willie dies and tries to figure out his new ghost abilities while also definitely freaking out kind of a lot.
Relationships: Willie (Julie and The Phantoms) & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Spoilers: Willie Dies [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2190132
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Skating in Traffic is Bad

At the end of his senior year, Willie had expected to feel relieved. It wasn’t that he hated school. He loved learning and figuring out new things. He was a curious person and if he hadn’t been constantly bullied he probably would’ve liked school. As it was, he had practically snatched his diploma and rushed off the stage, ready for the whole ordeal to be over and done with.

He did commissions and painted boards, but it wasn’t a regular thing. He got a job as a waiter at a cafe. It was a decent job and he liked his boss and coworkers well enough. They weren’t especially close, but they were friendly with each other for the most part. He skateboarded with Angie when they were both off work. She had graduated college and gotten a job as a curator’s assistant, and was confident that she could eventually work her way up the ladder. 

He didn’t have to deal with stupid kids at school now, but he did have to deal with irate customers and that was almost worse. Willie was a friendly person, but even he had his limits. The cafe would have open music days every now and then, and he loved to hear the live performances. Some of them were pretty good, even. 

It was one of those days, when a nice jazzy band had played and the air was warm and the whole world seemed peaceful and calm. He’d gotten off work early to finish off the paint job he’d done on Angie’s new skateboard for her birthday party that night. It was done except for the protective coating that would set it so it wouldn’t come off over time, but that needed time to dry and he wanted it to be ready when she got there. 

He swerved off the sidewalk to avoid a young woman with a stroller and then there was a blaring honk and he could feel something crash into his back. His helmet cracked against the asphalt and dug into his skull. There was blood dripping down the side of his face where it was pressed against the black asphalt and his torso screamed in pain. He couldn’t breathe through it and everything felt broken and the pain was blinding. And then everything faded into black.

He was in a dark room and the pain was gone but there was still hot-sticky-red on his face. He took off his helmet and looked around for his skateboard. It was gone, must’ve rolled away or… something. He poked at his ribs cautiously, but they seemed fine. He moved his fingers up to where his helmet had cracked and met bloody, matted hair but otherwise only smooth skin.  
He wasn’t in a hospital. Those were white, and even if he were then he wouldn’t have healed this quickly and completely. And even if he had, they would’ve washed the blood off of his face and put him in a hospital gown. 

That only left one explanation. He was dead. 

It was almost remarkable how calm he felt at that realization. He was a generally chill person but death would push anyone over the edge. It was odd though, he just felt… annoyed. Yes, annoyed was probably the best word for it.

This was terrible timing, really. Angie was supposed to pick him up at his apartment in two hours so they could go out to her favorite pizza place. Well clearly he wouldn’t be there. Instead he was stuck here. 

‘Here’ was an odd place to be. It wasn’t Hell, not enough burning or general gnashing of teeth. It certainly wasn’t Heaven. And although if he were honest, and he had no reason not to be, those were the general options he’d grown up hearing about and he’d always thought they were full of shit.

Sighing, he stood up. Spending eternity sitting in dark solitude didn’t sound like a good time. So instead he picked up his helmet and walked. Maybe if he went far enough he’d run into someone else. 

He’d give anything for his skateboard right around now.

Time passed, probably, but he didn’t get tired. He just walked aimlessly. 

And then he was falling. He looked up and saw the darkness fading away into bright blue skies and then he landed hard on the sidewalk of the street where he’d died. He sat up and looked around, and there on the edge of the street next to him was a kid, maybe eight or nine, who had picked up a shattered piece of skateboard and was studying it curiously.

As he turned it over in his hands, Willie caught a flash of the rainbow painted on the back. That was his skateboard. And it was broken. 

For some reason, this was far more upsetting than his literal death. Tears sprung up in his eyes and he took a great shuddering breath before he was overwhelmed with the permanence of it all. He was dead. He would never be able to skateboard again. He would never get to give Angie that skateboard. He’d never come out to his parents. He’d never grow up and get a boyfriend or riot in the streets during pride. 

He didn’t notice the lights of the grocery store behind him flickering with his breaths or the way the alarms on the cars across the street started blaring, though every ghost in a five block radius definitely did.

But that’s a story for another time.

A living person passed the grocery store and walked right through him, which was such a viscerally strange sensation that it startled him out of his pity party. 

Foreign feelings and impressions rushed through his head. His name was Arthur Peters and he was on his way to pick up a suit for his wedding. He was a naturally irate person and tended to lose his temper and hold grudges, but he was currently filled with a jittery excitement and enthusiasm. There was something warm and fond as well, that Willie couldn’t quite put a name to. He focused more on the feeling but it was suddenly gone, leaving him strangely empty.

He shook his head to clear it, and the odd empty feeling lessened.

One advantage to crying as a ghost, he supposed, was the distinct lack of a headache. He must’ve sobbed on that sidewalk for well over an hour --long after the kid had slipped the piece of skateboard in his pocket and kept walking-- and he didn’t feel the pulsing ache in his skull that always came with crying hard. Silver linings. 

Suddenly curious, he felt at the sleeves of his shirt where he’d been wiping his eyes. They were wet. He rubbed his wet sleeve against the ground, but it remained dry. Interesting. 

He stood and started walking to his apartment. Maybe he could wash the blood out of his hair in his sink. Absently, he wondered if his parents had noticed that he was dead. They weren’t his emergency contacts, Angie was. He imagined them sitting in the dark, messy apartment, completely unaware that their son was dead. There was a soft whooshing sound and his body tingled from his fingers to his toes, and then he was standing in the middle of his living room. His parents weren’t there. They were probably at work. 

He walked into the restroom and the yellowy light flicked on on its own. He looked in the mirror. He looked surprisingly normal, apart from the blood. It was matted in his hair, smeared on his face, stained in his uniform. His fingers phased through the metal dial that turned on the sink, making his whole hand tingle slightly. He frowned and concentrated on his hand, then tried again. The metal felt cold against his fingers. He stared at it quizzically. He’d been half expecting for that not to work. 

It was an interesting experience, washing his face and hair. Sometimes he’d lose focus and all the water on his skin would immediately phase through, leaving him completely dry and the water in a puddle on the floor. 

Regardless, he had soon rinsed and brushed through his hair. He looked in the mirror and felt a lot less dead than he had before. 

The clothes were still an issue, so he walked through the bathroom wall into his room, mostly because he wanted to know what it would feel like. It was the same faint tingling he had gotten from his hand in the bathroom, a toned-down version of the full body pinpricks he’d experienced when he had teleported into his living room.

His room was exactly how he had left it. The skateboard for Angie was still laying on the bed and his clothes were still hung over the back of his chair. 

He changed into the clothes he had set out for Angie’s birthday dinner and tossed his work clothes in the trash bin. It was easy to touch and wear his clothes. Maybe because they belonged to him? He didn’t seem to need to focus on them once he was wearing them, and when he deliberately became intangible and ended up phasing through the floor, they phased with him. 

The floor thing was interesting. He could stand and sit on things like it was second nature, but actually picking up things or moving them was difficult. Perhaps that was because standing and sitting didn’t change anything, while picking something up was actively affecting his surroundings. It was fascinating. 

Picking things up would probably get easier with practise, and Angie’s board was laying right there, ready to be set. So he sat down on his bed and pulled it into his lap, carefully setting to work. It required a great deal of focus and concentration, but luckily for him that was something he’d been practicing since that day on the roof two years ago. 

Soon the board was finished and all it needed was to dry. Now came the hard part. He picked up a pen and began to write in the card he’d left out earlier. He wasn’t sure exactly what was appropriate to write to one’s best friend when one died on their birthday, but he did his best. He thanked her sincerely for her friendship and filled the card with good memories and well-wishes. He nearly ran out of space, but managed to fit in a “Love, Willie” in the bottom. He was suddenly glad for his decision to use a blank card, because now both sides were filled with cramped writing. 

Apparently ghost tears couldn’t ruin paper, which was a plus.

He set the board and card on his desk, along with all his supplies and stood, staring at it for a moment.

Then he sat laid down on his bed and stared at his ceiling. Well, now what? Should he go find his parents or Angie? He wasn’t sure that he was ready to see them knowing that they couldn’t see him. What exactly were ghosts supposed to do all day? 

He glanced over at the clock on his bedside table. It was 7:30 p.m. Angie had planned to pick him up at 7. There were two reasons he could think of for her not being there: either she’d been called and was currently with his dead body or he had been in that dark void a whole day. 

He should go check on Angie, but the idea of seeing his own dead body was… weird. He didn’t know where she was anyways. He thought of his best friend, of her kind smile and snarky humor. Of the way her eyebrows creased when she was worried and the dimples that showed up when she was trying not to smile. He missed her. He wanted to see her so desperately that it hurt. His body started tingling and he had a split second’s view of a small chapel before his surroundings disappeared and he ended up standing in a coffin. 

He quickly stepped forward and felt his chest re-form as he phased out of the coffin. This was a funeral. This was his funeral. From where he was standing he could see some kind of priest speaking to two or three rows of people. He started at the back and studied each of their faces. There was his boss and a couple of his coworkers. He recognized a few of the people he’d been friendly with at skate parks. The Molinas were in front of them, along with a few other people from their apartment building. His parents were sitting in the front row, and their eyes were red and bloodshot, but they seemed far more present than they ever had when high. Finally he forced himself to look at the woman in the front row. 

Angie’s long hair was up in an elegant bun. She wore a formal black dress and flats. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, which he could understand. Runny mascara tears were far worse than normal tears. Her eyes were rimmed in red and the rest of her face was pale, but otherwise she was very composed. He was impressed.

He walked over and sat next to her on the pew. Vaguely familiar music started playing, and he checked the program in her hands. It was the closing hymn. He huffed a laugh. Typical. He was late to his own funeral. 

The program had the date of his death, as well as a date that he assumed was today. He’d been dead for three days. 

He studied Angie’s face again. She was composed, yes, but she looked so… lonely. She was all alone on the pew, separated from her family who sat in the row behind.

Willie concentrated all of his energy into his left hand and very carefully reached over to squeeze Angie’s. Just to let her know that he was there. It phased through and he quickly withdrew. He supposed that made sense. The dead could touch inanimate objects, but not the living. 

Abruptly, he remembered the man who had walked through him earlier that day. Willie had gotten an impression of his presence. Maybe that went both ways. 

He leaned to the side and phased through her entirely.  
As always, Angie was warm. He could feel her humor, her passion, all the best parts of her. He smiled at the feeling, and then was hit with such deep sadness that he flinched away instinctively, ending up a few feet away.

Angie had fresh tears in her eyes now, but there was a wild sort of hope in her expression. “Willie?” She whispered, her voice barely there and trembling. He nodded, despite knowing that she couldn’t see him, and came closer. He tried to wipe the tears from her cheeks, but she showed no sign of feeling his presence. 

He took a deep breath and phased into her again, trying to project as much love and affection as he could. The grief choked him again, mixing with his own and dragging him downwards, but he could feel her hope and sheer joy at the mere suggestion of his presence, so he didn’t move. He held on to what warmth he could find for as long as he could stand and then pulled away. It was too much.

“Thanks, Willie,” she said quietly, her voice stronger now. He smiled at her past his own tears and then pulled at the tingling feeling of teleportation, suddenly anxious to get out. 

He ended up in the gallery of Angie’s favorite museum. The museum that they’d never get to visit together again. 

Willie threw back his head and screamed.

**Author's Note:**

> So, in case you couldn't tell, I'm very interested in the intricacies of ghost powers and such. I figure that the "dark room where Alex cried" is a normal thing for ghosts, because Willie doesn't seem at all surprised by that in canon. So my headcanon is that when you die you either cross over immediately or go into that dark room until someone touches something that was important to you. Thus the kid with the skateboard.  
> I know that the phasing through people thing is canonically not this specific, but I've decided that the amount of information that a ghost can glean from phasing through someone is directly affected by how perceptive they are otherwise. Reggie only had a vague impression that Ray has a "kind heart", because Reggie is canonically not the most perceptive person when it comes to understanding other's emotions or reading a room. The same stands for Luke. I imagine that Alex would be a bit more perceptive, but we don't really get anything from the time he phases through Carlos, so I don't know. Willie, however, is canonically very good at reading people. He is very good at reading Alex's moods and adjusting his behavior to make Alex more comfortable, so I'm giving him a more comprehensive view of the people he phases through.  
> I also think that ghosts have some way of telling where people are, or at least people they know or they're connected to, because they always seem to 'poof' to each other with no problem. I also think that they are able to see a the area surrounding the people they're 'poofing' to, because they never end up inside objects like Willie did here. Sunset Curve seem to pick up teleportation quickly, but they struggle with picking things up and such. Therefore in the interest of balance, Willie is really good at picking things up and moving them, but has a hard time with teleportation.  
> That scene where Angie can feel Willie is based off of my Dad's experience going to his brother's funeral. He said that he could "just feel that he was there and that he loved me", and I thought that was sweet so I included it.  
> Also, there's no way that date with Alex was the first time Willie had yelled in a museum.


End file.
